Religious Leftists

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

As long as I’m quoting myself:

Rick had a link to a nice, logical, beefy, well-thought-out rebuttal to the “New Christianity” being espoused by Brian McLaren and others. I thought so highly of it that I sent it to some relatives whom I thought would be interested.

The response I got back, reminded me of my problems with organized religion. And, not-so-organized religion. And, come to think about it, social affairs outside of religion. In all walks of life, we become enemies of our own intellectual acumen when we spend too much time and energy trying not to argue about things. It causes us to fail to see incompatibilities among the various components we try to snap together. That’s one of the constructive points to arguing about things, you know: Try to determine incompatibilities among things, incompatibilities that would otherwise go undetected.

I won’t quote the other party, but I’ll excerpt from my reply:

The phrase “[McLaren] would have credible answers to many of his critics’ doubts” suggests a lack of experience “debating,” if one can call it that, religious leftists. These folk are not the debating type. Think of Al Gore being confronted by well-informed global warming skeptics…it’s a few steps down from that. A distracting sucker-punch, which neither the opponent or any bystanders can genuinely understand let alone dissect for a response, followed by a hasty change of subject. That’s about the best you can get out of them. See, “leftist,” in religion as well as in politics, has come to indicate a desire and inclination to think things out emotionally. Ideas are evaluated emotionally; new members are recruited to the movement emotionally. In religious leftism, there isn’t an awful lot of thought given to the thinking-concepts of Christianity — The Fall, man’s redemption, Christ Himself. As that McLaren critic pointed out, these things are all missing. Instead, the core elements are, as I’ve noticed:

1. I feel X;
2. (unstated but more important) I wouldn’t feel X if I were not a Good Person;
3. (also unstated but even more important) Others don’t feel X and therefore are not as good as I am.

And it is a constant that, as these other concepts are being discussed, all conversations lead back to #3. It is a relative exercise of self-evaluation. Therefore, it ends up being negative when it was conceived as something that was supposed to be positive…I suppose all cults are stacked into this crude, three-level pyramid — the idols and officials who drive the movement, the followers who are mere mortals but at least are heading in the right direction, and the stupid rubes who haven’t joined, don’t belong, aren’t heading in the right direction, and provide the contrast by which the cultist can feel good about himself.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: This need to feel like a worthy person, appears to drive everything else. There is a sense, on the left, in both religion and politics, that motion is needed for redemption. This makes the entire engine go. Redemption from what? Real Christianity is precise and thought-provoking in answering that question. Also, in real Christianity the emphasis is on coming to terms with one’s Creator, with one’s destiny, so that one can turn one’s attention to other pressing worldly concerns on the other six days of the week. Be functional. Just as God was on His six days. Leftists, on the other hand, seem to be engaged in a Sisyphean struggle to continually earn some redemption which is lost to them a few seconds later, so it has to be earned back again. Audibly.

They’re pretty annoying, and they don’t seem to have a clear understanding, themselves, of what they do & don’t want to discuss. When people ritually dispense the time-honored advice of “let’s not discuss religion or politics,” the older I get the more convinced I am this is a reference to leftists.

I happen to think that so-called “religious leftists” are in some kind of denial. They’re people who have never critically examined their own beliefs – spiritual or political – and come to realize the contradictions.

This is especially true of Christians, and since I am one, that’s what I will comment on. (I know comparatively little about other faiths, though granted I think liberal Jews have the same problem.) I wrote a long essay on this subject about three years ago, but here were the salient points:

– Jesus was not a liberal, but a conservative. He didn’t “shake up the old order,” he restored it by clarifying a number of teachings, as well as pointing out the hypocrisy and corruption of the religious authorities of the day.

– Contrary to liberal belief, compassion is measured by what you yourself do for the downtrodden, not how much you “care” or what publicly-funded programs you support, or how much time you spend advocating for the government to carry them on or expand them.

– Little if any part of the modern left-wing social, political, or economic agenda is compatible with Christian teaching as laid out in the New Testament. Quite the contrary, in fact.

This yawning gap exists because these “religious leftists” feel their way through life, rather than thinking their way through. It is certainly true that coming to Christ is likely a matter of the heart rather than of the head, but that is only a starting point. From there, the faith means little without a willingness to logically examine its implications, as well as what those implications compel a believer to do while in the political arena. (And I’ll have none of this nonsense that Christians are called to stay out of that arena entirely. That’s hogwash, and I’ll be happy to explain why to anyone who asks.)

All I can think about is that silly girl my cousin married. Christian yes, but as far to the Left as Obama, Reid, Pelosi, and Michael Moore. Agrees with every last one of them on every last moronic idea that’s come out of their mouths in the last five years. I have engaged her in the past in debate and have utterly destroyed her. It is not even that hard to do so.

Not only salient points, but excellent ones. Christianity, and Judaism before it, are supremely intellectual religions. “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

Solid, muscular Christianity is a discipline of the mind, first and foremost. If you cannot control your mind and organize your thoughts, you cannot hope to stand against the contemporary mores.